If someone asked, "Who has had a rock pyramid built in their honor?" you might think of an Egyptian pharoah or an Aztec king. You would probably not think of a bespectacled, middle-aged, midwestern man named Hugh J. Gray. Nevertheless, Hugh has one -- on a smaller scale compared to the ones in Egypt and Mexico, but a rock pyramid nevertheless.
Hugh was, according to the plaque on his pyramid, the "Dean of Michigan's Tourist Activity." The pyramid stands on Cairn Highway, named apparently in reference to Hugh's pile of rocks. Cairn Highway is an obscure back road today, which says something about the transientness of fame.
Hugh's pyramid is built of rocks from each of Michigan's 83 counties. Its plaque notes, at the bottom, that "This Point is Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole." This is wishful thinking; the meridian is more than a mile north of here. But it does suggest, along with the pyramid's dedication year of 1938, that Hugh's pyramid is in fact just an excuse -- just a "halfway marker" in disguise -- one of a series of plaques-on-rocks put up in 1938, in a line across Michigan and Wisconsin, by latitude-obsessed newspaper publisher and freemason Frank E. Noyes.
